Dearly as Myself
by LondonBelow
Summary: Carl's resolve crumbles, leaving him wondering if he has lost his soul. Van Helsing realizes how little he truly knows about his friend. Slash.
1. Chapter 1

Note: This is a work of slash fiction. That means it will deal with homosexuality. If you disapprove of homosexuality, that's your right, just as it is my right to write this story. I have done my best to write with respect to all people: Catholics, homosexuals, heterosexuals, atheists, &c.

Disclaimer: Van Helsing is a character created by Bram Stoker who at this point is more or less public domain, but the fact remains that I am making no profit from this story and own no characters you recognize.

**Chapter One**

The Knights of the Holy Order were numerous and strong, the stuff of legends really. Dispatched, they ventured into darkness and from those fringes recovered what was lost, righted what was wrong, fixed what was broken, then slipped away, unnoticed with luck, unwelcome without, and unthanked either way. Even their holy confessors understood that it needed more than prayer to refresh a man from this and allotted a day of rest once the task was complete.

Some Knights did not care for this day of rest. Gabriel Van Helsing was notable among them. He seemed so ill at ease in the Vatican, he did not pause to see the apothecary before attending confession. The confessional was a business for him. The Cardinals wanted his soul clean, so he attended, was cleansed and received his marching orders.

After that, matters became much simpler: visit the catacombs for new and relevant weaponry; tease Carl; leave. And Gabriel was happy.

Cardinal Andre Jinette sat in the confessional, waiting. No one could miss Van Helsing's arrival. He seemed to compensate for the secrecy he was forced to keep by arriving with as much mess, noise and fuss as he could. If he felt particularly satisfied, this might be confined to a dozen traumatized pigeons and an angry, stomping march through the chapel. That was a good day for Gabriel Van Helsing.

Andre sighed and removed his galero. No one would see, not through the confessional screen, so there was no harm done. Where was Van Helsing? This absence was beginning to annoy him. It was their routine. Van Helsing came to Rome; Van Helsing complained; Van Helsing was dispatched. He had been in Rome nearly four hours now, all of which Andre had spent sitting in the confessional _not_ being visited, and he was growing annoyed!

Mostly Andre considered himself a child-minder, at least in reference to Van Helsing. For the Christians among the Holy Order he provided spiritual as well as literal guidance, but when it came to Van Helsing, Andre understood that his duty was to handle tantrums and rein in the man. And, in his modest opinion, he fulfilled this duty admirably.

Where, then, was Van Helsing!? Andre twisted his galero, frustrated. Their relationship did not involve dillydallying and waiting around! He relied on Van Helsing, and this surprised even Andre: he relied on Van Helsing because he enjoyed their interactions. He enjoyed their spiteful banter. He enjoyed the way they acknowledged their relationship with mutual hatred so stale it was no longer there. More affection existed between the two than hatred or anger.

The ring of a bell rolled through the holy place, announcing the evening worship. Andre Jinette sighed, stood, and jammed his hat onto his head. As he headed out of the confessional, he wondered if he should come back later—just in case.

---

The vespers bell reached every inch of the city, from the holiest heart to the scummiest hovel-hole. It called many holy men up from the catacombs or out from the libraries. It called peasants, whores, merchants and beggars from their vocations. Even those not willing to attend, atheists and Christmas Catholics and those who simply found droned Latin absolutely boring, looked up from the daily grind.

A tavernkeeper smiled and called the supper options. They hadn't changed since the previous evening, and the evening before that, and so forth for the past forty-one days. As always, Gianni the keeper offered his patrons beer or ale, soup and bread or bread and soup. He was half-blind in one eye and his teeth rotted into a strange lack of alignment; his wife Ilse was an angry old German who settled after pilgrimaging to the Holy Land, a sharp-tongued woman apt to snap her wooden spoon against the hand or shoulder or another available place of any man out of line in her tavern. It kept them busy, the order, and the fact that Ilse knew her way around the spice rack.

In the alley behind the tavern, pressed against the back wall with her skirt above her waist, Louisa looked up as though to see God at the Vespers bell. Had He been looking down, He might have been displeased with the look of contempt and rebellion on the young woman's otherwise beautiful face. Louisa had a score to settle with the Alpha and the Omega, and any time he wished to appear to her she was ready. He was not, it appeared, so Louisa merely tapped her costumer on the shoulder.

"Ten seconds and I'm charging another hour," she warned, and almost smiled when the warm coin passed into her hand.

Meanwhile, in the heart of a holy place, a panicked friar leapt from his bed in a state of panic. "Oh no, oh no, oh no! Oh God preserve me and damn it all!" This particular friar had a number of things to worry about, and being late to vespers without his zucchetto did not top the list. He did not like his zucchetto, anyway. He was not tonsured, so it served no purpose but to be one more nuisance item he was constantly losing. No, being late to vespers without his zucchetto seemed unimportant at the moment, because Carl faced the most embarrassing episode of his life since the day his brothers learned he had chosen Saint Peregrine as his patron: today topped that. Today Carl was late to vespers, and he was naked.

"Carl, what are you doing?" This mumbled question came from Gabriel Van Helsing, who rubbed his eyes, blinked, and asked, "Why are you getting dressed?" He had only just woken.

Carl paused, one leg jammed halfway into his trousers. Carl was the sort of man who dressed sitting down. He was the sort of man who always dressed sitting down, because otherwise he tended to fall, and the stones tended to bruise him. And Carl didn't like that. So his tone was a touch harsher than he liked when he replied, "Vespers."

Gabriel propped himself up on his elbow and raised an eyebrow. "Vespers?" he asked, incredulous. "And your trousers are backwards."

Carl dropped his pants and mustered as much dignity as was possible for a man looking utterly frantic and scrawny. Years spent poring over books and maps and messing about with chemicals did not contribute to an impressive physique. He was reedy and pale. "I am a friar, you know."

"You're a friar who has spent the past four hours committing copious venial sins," Gabriel replied. There was laughter in his voice, but that did not carry to Carl, whose panic deepened. He began upending his cell in search for that zucchetto. "Carl," Gabriel murmured. Carl hesitated only a fraction of a second, then returned to his work. "You're really a Catholic," Gabriel realized, and found himself staring as though seeing a pink elephant. "Carl, would you please listen to me?" he asked.

Again Carl would not respond.

Gabriel sighed. He had hoped it would not come to this, but Carl left him no choice. Drastic measures were called for. "Carl, if you don't talk to me I won't tell you where the zucchetto is."

Carl turned to Gabriel, wearing a frustrated expression with his shoulders slumped in defeat. "I'm not going to Vespers, am I?" The answer was clear, if silent. "Won't… won't that bother God?"

At that, Gabriel laughed. "I don't have a direct cable to Him, Carl. I know as much about His will as you do."

"But you… you're…"

Carl gave up. Gabriel was laughing too hard to listen.

_to be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: As stated previously--if you recognize it, I don't own it.

**Chapter Two**

"I'm not unreasonable, you know."

This is the statement Carl presented to Gabriel as a warning. They were lying in bed and Carl held up his hand and said this as Gabriel reached his arms around him. Gabriel hesitated, gave Carl an amused look, then hugged him close. In the small bed their bodies were pressed close without effort; Gabriel considered it an unholy talent that Carl seemed able to pull away and not fall out.

He considered it an unholy talent also that he and Carl had, over the years, been in physical contact so rarely that the lines and contours of Carl's body surprised him. He had _looked_ at that body, at least as much as one can look at a body sheathed in friar's robes, but he had never noticed, for example, that Carl was actually quite tall. He thought Carl to be short. What else would he think? Carl's head was always close to Gabriel's shoulder. But he hunched, scurried, and generally avoided standing up straight. Now they were nose to nose and Gabriel knew two things about Carl, first that he was taller than he appeared and second that Carl's complaints of chilly extremities were not exaggerated, nor limited to his fingers.

The man who did not flinch at Mr. Hyde, who counted the Frankenstein monster among his friends, who laughed in the Rue Morgue, resisted the urge to yelp at the freezing toes brushing against his legs.

"Not unreasonable about what?"

"I don't know, anything," Carl replied. "Well, not about facts, of course, but otherwise I'm open to discussion."

Gabriel laughed softly. He wondered, did Carl know what he wanted to say? Or were these babbling fits simply realization of an unresolved mind? "It took me six years to get you into bed, Carl. Most women, it takes me a somewhere from six minutes to six days. You're unreasonable."

True to form, Carl quibbled over fact. "To be fair, you weren't actually trying for six years…"

Gabriel smiled. Reliable Carl. "Yes, I was."

"What—really?" Carl asked. "But… we have only been in the field together for three years," he observed. He wanted to say that if anything they were less likely to pass beyond friendship here in the abbey, but considering what had just happened the response was less powerful. In fact it was plain foolish.

Gabriel admitted, "Yes, I have been attempting to get you into bed for the past six years." When they first went into the field together, three years ago in Transylvania, Gabriel thought he had his chance. Isolated transients, no reputation of these deeds would follow them. They were far from Rome. But the friar kept himself in contact with those darned cables, and though he skirted as many rules as possible, Gabriel's advances were ignored, if noticed at all.

But then, as far as Gabriel knew, Carl had lived most of his life in the abbey and needed more than subtle hints. As obvious as comments like 'your eyes look beautiful at sea' or 'oh, are you nauseous, may I hold your hair while you vomit?' were in the regular world, in Carl's world they were strange pleasantries.

"Why did you think I requested _you_?" Gabriel asked.

Carl shook his head. "You didn't request me. I was assigned to you as pen—" he began, then realized what he was saying and quickly concluded, "I was assigned to you."

Gabriel gave Carl an incredulous, amused look. "You were assigned to me as _penance_?" he asked. That was a new one. Gabriel had been given his share of penance. He was not sure how many hours he had spent in prayer and he had seen Carl doing other penances, mostly scrubbing floors.

"I didn't say that!" Carl replied. "I did not say that."

"No, but you started to say it," Gabriel said. "You thought it. It's fact. What sin did you commit to deserve me? Did you think impure thoughts?" he asked, managing to shake his finger at Carl which in so small a space was a considerable accomplishment. "You shouldn't do that, you're a monk."

Carl gave Gabriel his best schoolmarm look. "Yes I did think impure thoughts, if you must know. And I'm still just a friar," he added as an afterthought, "but no Catholic should think impure thoughts, and some are impurer than others. Everyone knows Brother Bernardo thinks impure thoughts about the confectionary. You may think confessions are sacred but they aren't. Everyone knows everyone's business in an abbey."

"So everyone knows your sin?" Gabriel asked.

"Well, yes," Carl replied, surprised Gabriel would ask. Everyone knew about Bernardo. Of course everyone knew about him, too. The only worse rumor mill than an abbey full of monks was an abbey full of nuns.

Suddenly Gabriel wanted to stay in the abbey more often. "So what is it?" he asked. "Your sin, what is it?"

Carl smiled wryly. "I wanted to do what we just did," he said.

"Specifically? The thing with the…?"

"Ah. No, no, no, more general."

"You wanted me to…?"

"Yes—well no. Well, yes," Carl admitted, "but not. It wasn't you. I simply happen to prefer men," he stated, as though it was nothing unusual at all, then he groaned and buried his face in his hands.

Gabriel nearly started to laugh. It wasn't appropriate, he knew. Carl was upset, and even if this was a one-time occurrence and their relationship dwindled to an awkward shadow of friendship, laughing while Carl was miserable made Gabriel feel dirty. Fewer and fewer acts bothered him these days: making a man cry was acceptable, laughing while he did was not; endangering a man was acceptable, killing him was not. But everything changed with Carl.

So he stifled his laughter and hugged Carl, who whimpered and latched onto Gabriel like a starfish.

"So… because you prefer men, they sent you out of the abbey?" Gabriel asked. He rubbed Carl's back. The questions were inevitable but there was no reason to be an ass.

"No, I requested a transfer to another, ideally much smaller environment. I asked to be the holy confessor to a nunnery," Carl admitted, and both men laughed at that, leaving Carl blushing at his self-mockery. "It seemed the safest place, no temptations of any kind. And I truly thought it would happen—then they sent me into the field. With you."

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. With him, that was the worst part?

Something must have tipped Carl off to Gabriel's thoughts, or he simply guessed them, because he said, "Well it's not as though you have not been trying."

Gabriel laughed. "In what way?"

"Patience. You try my patience."

He only laughed harder.

Carl squeaked as he protested, "You said I looked like a pastry!"

"Now Carl, you know that's not true—"

"It is true!" Carl remembered very precisely; he had a very precise memory, very useful for a scientist. Or a Biblical scholar, for that matter. They had been on their way home. It was a warm spring. They slept in a field by a stream, a field with too many gnats and wasps and nettles, and in the morning Gabriel said…

"I said you looked like a sausage roll."

Triumphant, Carl yelped, "Aha! You admit it."

"Well, I admit I said you looked like a sausage roll—"

"Which is a pastry," Carl concluded. He liked being right. That was one advantage to a less intelligent companion, ample opportunity to be right.

Gabriel disagreed: "It's meat. It's sausage-based."

"Like the rest of your thinking!" Carl quipped, and Gabriel chuckled. It might have been a pity chuckle. Carl accepted the bruising his self-esteem could take from that and explained, "It's a sausage wrapped up in pastry. Pastry! Therefore, it's pastry."

Gabriel grinned. Oh but Carl was cute when he had a point to make, just going on and on to make sure everyone knew he was right. "All right, but you do look like a sausage roll when you sleep; it's because you wrap yourself up in the blanket, which makes you the sausage."

Carl sighed. "No, please, this torrent of praise must cease. Vanity is a sin," he remarked sarcastically. It was not that it bothered him, per se. If Gabriel wanted to use sausage rolls as the basis of sweet nothings, so be it. Carl was simply so accustomed to responding to teasing with belittling sarcasm, he found himself sniping before thinking.

Gabriel shifted slightly. With two bodies pressed close on a cot, this caused obvious physical reactions for both men.

"Just what I need. Late to Vespers and naked and…" Carl couldn't bring himself to say it.

Gabriel had no such qualms. "Erect?" he supplied.

Carl attempted to speak, failed, and groaned. Gabriel kissed him. "My God, but I love you."

"'s blasphemy," Carl murmured by habit. Both men began to laugh.

_to be continued_

If you're so inclined, reviews would be welcome!


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. No profit is being made.

**Chapter Three**

Gabriel woke twice during the night. The first time, he was awakened by Carl's return. He vaguely registered the cold, those damn toes, and a shivering body against him. He heard a low, rapid sound and realized Carl was saying his prayers. The room was dark, and Gabriel drifted off again.

The second time he woke, a pale blue-grey light crept across the stone floor. A candle flickered in the corner. Carl was dressing, judging by the light for Prime. He faced the wall opposite Gabriel and kept up a steady stream of murmurs. Gabriel watched the way he moved, the way the candlelight fell on his legs and left the rest a mass of shadow. Then Carl bent and blew out the flame. He hurried from the room, nothing but a moving shadow.

Gabriel fell asleep.

When he woke again, he had sprawled out as much as he could on the small bed. He knew this without moving from the cold he felt throughout his left hand and foot, both of which hung over the side of the bed. This was the first thing Gabriel noticed. Outside, a bird tittered. Had he missed Terce? No matter… Gabriel smiled and rolled his shoulders, then flexed the muscles in his legs.

Then he cracked open an eye. Yes, he had most certainly missed Terce. The light from the window was weak, but pure brightness. The sun would be nearer overhead than the horizon now, but the light felt too weak for afternoon. What did it matter, anyway? Gabriel did not _work_ in the abbey. His work was outside. The abbey was a place to catch up on sleep, recuperate if wounded (_not bloody likely_, he thought) and receive new orders.

Gabriel tucked his arms under his head. He would not be receiving new orders for a while yet. Carl needed more time.

It wasn't long before Gabriel was simply too bored to stay still anymore. Gabriel was not one who enjoyed long, thoughtful reflection; Gabriel, rather, enjoyed moving. When he was chasing a demon or a monster across the countryside, it wasn't about destroying evil, not during the chase. Then it was about pure action. It was about his mind taking a pause and his body knowing what to do, just knowing, the way his legs knew to run and ride and climb. It was the closest he had come to happiness in a long time, before last night.

He pushed back the blanket and dressed, unable to keep from thinking that clothing was flat-out annoying, though necessary. The alternative made him smile. Strutting through the abbey nude as though it were—and it was—the most natural of things!

Gabriel chuckled. One of these days he would do something so wild. One of these days he would grow tired of mere defiant talk; still, the defiant talk was entertaining enough. Catholics! The right word in the right place and they were practically rioting. He loved them because they were like toys. He loved them because they were hilarious. He loved the quaint hypocrisy of teaching peace under the image of a bloodied man.

Catholics…

It was something Gabriel had never considered before, how Carl came to the Vatican. He had always thought, well, look at the Vatican, its science, its resources. The things Carl wanted to do and the things he could do because of his mind were realized by access to a monumental amount of supplies and ample time to work. Where else would he find such things? The only answers Gabriel could imagine were in the church or in the castle of a noble, and they both knew the working in the castle of a noble meant being a servant, however opulent your lifestyle. So Carl had come to the Vatican.

That he had come out of love of God had never occurred to Gabriel. Men like Carl relied on God to solve problems they couldn't solve themselves. They relied on God to warn, "Judge not lest ye be judged," or on Jesus to remind them, "Turn the other cheek," because they would undoubtedly lose in a physical fight. God was just another commodity to them.

Gabriel himself considered God a sort of presence in all people, something that felt like glowing in his veins and told him right from wrong. He assumed most people had the same sensations, though muted, more faith than knowledge. Again, it seemed strange that Carl would have faith. Carl didn't have _faith_. His world was divided between knowledge and mystery.

This was the man Gabriel saw, the man who followed after him, the man who gave him toys and the chance to joke at his expense and, unknowingly, great succor.

Great—Gabriel chuckled at the thought and shook his head. That was a good one. Too bad Carl hadn't said it or he would make a joke.

Yes. Carl. That was the man Gabriel Van Helsing saw in the little friar, who was not so small in the end but rather unnoticed. He thought he knew Carl inside and out. Carl was rational, clever, absent-minded, with little to no sense of humor. Where inside that friend was the nervous creature running to Mass? Where was the Catholic who sinned?

It bothered Gabriel greatly. He had worked six years with Carl and thought he knew him inside and out, but now he wondered. He knew the small things. He knew that Carl bit his nails when he was very nervous or upset or distracted, that heights and spiders terrified him--more than other things, anyway--what he looked like when he came. Surprisingly Gabriel had known the last for years, almost two and a half years, since the night Gabriel couldn't sleep and he learned that even friars have _those_ dreams.

Gabriel knew the ins and outs of Carl's daily habits, there was no doubt about that, but there were facts missing. Where was Carl from? How did he begin to study chemistry? Did he have family? How had he come to the church? What did he believe about God?

What was his last name?

_to be continued_


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I don't own; I am making no profit here; please don't sue me.

**Chapter 4**

Carl waited for the others to leave. He avoided their eyes by touching his forehead to his clasped hands as he murmured the Our Father over and over. No one bothered him then. Monks were gossips, but they were not cruel, and would murmur "Brother Carl has sinned" over the holy water and speculate on the manner of this sin, but they would not interrupt his prayer.

Not that it mattered for that reason, anyway. His heart wasn't in it. Carl could say the Our Father in his sleep—according to Gabriel he sometimes did, though Carl suspected that was mere taunting.

That day he stayed after Nones praying while in his head he prepared himself for a chat with Father Moretti. Of all the men in the Vatican, Moretti frightened Carl the least and struck him as the purest. Somehow though Cardinal Jinette was pure, his closeness to the Order made that pureness almost less legitimate. Carl spoke to Jinette about his chemicals, not about his soul. Sometimes Carl felt Jinette absolved him simply to have him back to work.

Moretti knew of the Holy Order and kept away from it.

And Carl was going to speak to him. Yes, he was. He imagined argument and snapped against it. He wasn't ready, but he would manage. It was important enough to step past his comfort. He needed to discuss—

"Brother Carl?"

Carl startled up from his prayer. The priest sat beside him in the pew; how had Carl not noticed him arrive? Well, it didn't matter. "Father, I must speak with you." If Moretti needed something, he would have to wait. Carl could help no one until he had helped himself. For a week now, a week since he sinned with Gabriel, he had barely spoken to anyone, Gabriel especially. It was eroding his soul; Carl practically felt himself dying from the inside out. "Please. It's about a sin—"

Moretti shook his head. "You know you cannot repeat what you heard in confession."

"It wasn't in confession, Father, it was my—Father, I'm just a friar. I've never heard confession. But—no, that's not important, it was my sin," Carl babbled. "Only I'm not sure it is a sin. Because how do you know if it's a sin? It didn't feel like a sin." He thought of the ending, how he had felt more intensely alive than ever before, the safety of lying in someone's arms and feeling vulnerable and charged with the electricity of skin on skin in places no one had ever touched. "Well… sometimes it felt like a sin." It had hurt, too. Though he was held and kissed and told wonderful things and given a joy beyond prior knowledge, there had been pain. "It's…"

"Ah. Is this in the wives and children vein of things?" Moretti asked, and Carl's mind leapt back six years to the young woman in Romania. It had been so strange. The things she did, his body liked them, but he was thinking about the Wolfman and what could have made Dracula what he was and where he hadn't looked yet in the house for information.

But he had done with her something in many ways very similar to what he and Gabriel had done, so Carl answered, "Yes, Father." Yet there was nothing of wives involved, and it was not the way of children, so Carl had to amend, "And… no, Father. Not with a woman, but—"

"Ah. That."

_That_? Was it as simple as _that_? What he had done, sins he had committed against the church, felt huge to Carl. His sins chewed him over. They defined him more than his greatest deeds, and every time Carl helped Van Helsing defeat evil he considered at least a part of that his good deeds.

While Carl reeled in shock, Father Moretti continued, "Not to worry," and clapped Carl on the shoulder in a way that made Carl jump. "Only once in twenty years, you should have pride. It happens to the best of us. God will forgive you."

Oh. _That_. That was _that_ to Carl. "No, it… I know that's a sin."

Moretti smiled, understanding. "Yes, but it feels very good, doesn't it?" he asked. "Not like a sin."

"I wouldn't know, Father."

Moretti raised his very bushy eyebrows and asked, disbelieving, "Really?"

Carl nodded. "Well yes. I came to the church before I—well, it hardly seems to matter," he murmured. How did this _still_ happen? The truth was that no matter how attracted Carl was to men, well to certain men, he felt very uncomfortable and inferior around them.

Moretti nodded in response, though Carl had the distinct impression he was being overlooked, his words ignored. "So, you've come to me about a sin that might not be a sin?" Moretti asked. "I'm afraid you're going to have to tell me what that perhaps-sin was."

"Yes…" Carl took a deep breath. "Father, I have known another man."

There was a moment of silence that was more than an absence of sound. It was a full absence. Carl could not speak, could not continue, could not explain how a man baffled by poetry felt his heart was singing, because he could not breathe. He opened his mouth but there was no air. Every part of life had been taken from the room.

Then Moretti sighed and said, "Gabriel Van Helsing."

Not understanding, Carl looked around, but Gabriel was not there. He had simply assumed, since Moretti was looking away, that he was stating Gabriel's name because Gabriel was there. Then he realized that Moretti was stating the name as the man Carl referred to and nodded. "Yes, Father."

Moretti shook his head in clear disappointment and stood. He said, "You must pray for forgiveness," and he walked away.

By the time Carl managed to protest, "But… Father…" the priest was gone. Carl sighed and slumped down in the pew. Was it so simple? Could that be all there was to it, so simple, the way Moretti dismissed him without so much as penitence, because no penitence could amend for such a sin?

This sin, Carl understood suddenly, was not the problem. He sat still in the pew, staring ahead and feeling his heart thud dully, trying to register in his mind what had been said. The problem was not what he did, but that he did it at all. Normal people did not do what Carl had done. Normal people would not think to. Carl had committed this sin because he was innately wrong. He did not need to do penance, because he could not be redeemed.

_to be continued_


End file.
